


Bengal Red

by Trista_zevkia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Red Pants Monday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trista_zevkia/pseuds/Trista_zevkia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The red pants of legend were an accident. Really!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bengal Red

**Author's Note:**

> Was supposed to be for the fuckyeahjohnlock red pants contest on tumbler, but I have no concept of time. I got it done before midnight, just a day late and a headdesk short. 
> 
> http://fuckyeahjohnlockfanfic.tumblr.com/post/31920622288/fuckyeahjohnlockfanfic-reapersun-and

Bengal Red

Sherlock grinned at the slide in front of him, pleased at how clearly the tiny beetle stood out from the leaves and debris. Any decent forensic technician, which left out most of the yarders, could tell if a person drowned in chlorinated water or not. A few replications from random decorative ponds across London, and Sherlock would be able narrow down non-chlorinated, fresh water drowning cases where the body was moved, to the street that held the body of water. 

“Sherlock!” John’s exasperated tone was just the right level of urgency and irritation to break through Sherlock’s thought process. 

“Yes, John?” 

“I have a shift in two hours and I’ve been up all night running around after you. I need to do a load of whites but I have to sleep. Will you please put them in the dryer for me?” 

“Sure. You don’t have to make such a production of it.” 

John forced back his first reply, but Sherlock still heard John take him to task for making a production out of everything and refusing to help with the boring things that had to get done. “Thank you, Sherlock.” 

The case hadn’t been that physically exhausting or mentally challenging, so Sherlock knew he’d be up for a while yet. He also remembered he had some whites that needed washing, and putting his things in would help him remember to dry John’s pants. 

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ S<3J ˉ\\(ɂ)/ˉ

“Sherlock!” 

John’s voice seemed to be trying for higher registers than it was ever meant to use. It was also urgent enough to wake Sherlock from where he appeared to have fallen asleep while preparing a new slide. This sort of thing never happened before John showed up with his need to care for the transport. 

“Sherlock! What did you do? All I asked was for you to put the clothes in the dryer. How did you even manage this?” 

Peeling a worm off the cheek that had been squashed on the slide, Sherlock stood up. He’d put their clothes in the dryer, added fabric softener and turned the thing on. What more did John want from him? 

“If they are not dry enough...” Sherlock’s snarled and cutting insult died on his lips when he saw John stalking toward him, tattered housecoat not diminishing the anger in his appearance. John had a basket of laundry under one arm while he waved a pair of pants at Sherlock. The makeshift flag was bright red, as was all the laundry in the basket. 

“How did my load of whites turn red? Normal flatmates would have at least turned everything that dingy pink that will wash out eventually, but you dyed everything a very permanent looking red!” 

An attractive shade of red apparently, as John’s face was striving for the same color. Sherlock wisely refrained from saying that out loud, or adding that John wore red well. 

“What possible experiment could this be? You did this; you’ve even got a red mark on you cheek to prove it.” 

Sherlock brushed a hand where John’s eyes were looking, remembering the worm he’d peeled away. “Bengal red.” 

“What?” 

“The dye for the benthic macroinvertebrates! The bugs I’ve been studying, I dyed them so they’d be easier to see. Somehow the dye got in the washer.” 

“It was an accident?” John was surprised out of his anger by this lack of perfection. 

“Yes, John. I’m not perfect, thank you for pointing that out.” Sherlock reconsidered his words before they were out but too late to stop them. If he was as smart as he claimed, he should have used John’s reaction to end the argument instead of getting defensive. He knew John didn’t think he was perfect, but Sherlock went out of his way to impress John, in an effort to keep the man around for as long as possible. 

“Even perfect people can have accidents. I’m sorry I yelled, since you did what I asked and all.” John sighed, turning his attention to the pants. He got embarrassed just looking at them, but seemed to accept the situation. “Hopefully, today won’t be the day a corrosive chemical gets spilled on me and I have to drop trou in front of the whole surgery.” 

John turned away to get ready and Sherlock listed the common chemicals found in a surgery to see which ones might eat through drab trousers and lab coats. Chemistry was soothing, helping Sherlock avoid imagining what John had described. Except when he was done with the chemicals, the image was ready and waiting. 

John wearing only his newly red pants in the waiting room of the surgery, everyone getting a good look. John imagined laughter in this situation, and there was some of that. Good natured laughter, the kind Sherlock thought was an old wives’ tale until he met John. The straight guys were laughing, and all the people interested in John’s compact body were ogling, whistling or taking pictures. 

Turning back to his experiment, Sherlock tried to start concentrating on that again, only to make tea and toast for John. No more was said of the red laundry, and John thanked him for breakfast before hurrying out. Sherlock would never know if he imagined that splash of red when John bent down for his briefcase. 

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ S<3J ˉ\\(ɂ)/ˉ

Sherlock leaned against a pillar and glared at his city. At some point in the last week, London had decided to put the color red in every possible place, just to torment Sherlock further. He was supposed to be meeting with his contacts, keeping up to date on any new information so he’d be ready when the next case came along. But now, instead of running past things like the museum and remembering John’s ASBO, Sherlock was stopping to think about the poster someone had put over the spray-paint. A very red poster. 

Trying his hardest not to observe, Sherlock forced himself to walk away and tried to force himself not to think of John in red. Red pants, covering the bits of John that Sherlock did not want to think about. Or, not think about more than he already did. Usually the things Sherlock needed to know but didn’t want to think about were locked into secure storage boxes in his mind palace. For his secret, forbidden thoughts about John, Sherlock had to install a secret passage to a hidden underground room. 

Only in a dire emergency of boredom and depression was Sherlock allowed to visit the secret passage in his own mind palace. It lead to an damp cave that should have smelled of guano and stale air. Instead, it smelled of tea and replaced the darkness with stalactites that glittered like diamond chandeliers. The cold stone floor and walls were as warm and soft as certain woolen jumpers. Not that the John who awaited Sherlock there couldn’t provide pain when Sherlock needed it, but it was always safe, warm and John. 

A woman in a red coat walked across Sherlock’s line of vision, and he realized he’d been walking and thinking about John. A quick turn let him take in his location, but he decided to stand on the spot until he figured out what to do about John and the gift wrapped present under the big red bow of his y-fronts. A present that didn’t have Sherlock’s name on it. 

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ S<3J ˉ\\(ɂ)/ˉ

John came home early, hurrying up the steps like he did when he hoped for a case and some excitement. If he hadn’t have been hurrying, Sherlock could have hidden, or so Sherlock would always tell himself. John entered the flat and stopped in the doorway to stare. Sherlock tried to glare haughtily at him, even as he knew it wouldn’t distract John from asking. Sherlock knew he looked too ridiculous for John to take this in stride, as he did so much. 

Yes, the ginger hair dye might have been overkill, and the red leather trousers expensive for this single use, but John had seen him in the red shirt before. What was the point of a sock index if you couldn’t find red socks when you wanted them? The red bed sheets spread over the couch and Sherlock’s chair would fit on his bed, so not wasteful at all. Actually, the sheets looked very comfortable from where Sherlock was kneeling on the floor, hands cuffed behind him. 

John took of his coat, but didn’t seem to want to look away from Sherlock long enough to hang it up, so he just held it in front of him. “Would you care to explain this?” 

“You’ve heard of Pavlov and his dogs, I presume?” 

John nodded, eyes only narrowing slightly at Sherlock’s insult to his education. 

“I’m attempting to decondition myself to the conditional response I’ve come to associate with the color red.” 

“By handcuffing yourself in a red outfit?” 

Sherlock didn’t feel that needed a reply. 

John moved over to sit in his chair, frowning in confusion at the fact it wasn’t covered in red. He kept his coat in his lap as he sat, but Sherlock was too busy not watching and instead staring at the red covered couch to wonder at what was going on behind his back. The bits at his front were taking enough interest in John’s presence that Sherlock didn’t think his brain needed to be involved. 

“Sherlock, medically, I don’t know if this is going to work.” 

“I’m not spending years in therapy to correct the issue, as my research suggested.” His research on deconditioning had been frustratingly not helpful. Exposure worked with fear responses, so it should work for this. All red, no John, no trips to his pleasure dungeon and he’d get over this. 

“I get that, I do. But why the handcuffs?” 

“To stop me from masturbating, obviously.” He only had two pairs of red socks, so he couldn’t spill into the ones he wore now like he had the others. That first time had been expected really, it was the second time that had surprised Sherlock. He’d been able to see John’s chair then, so he’d changed the experiment. Hopefully he’d have been able to face John’s chair by the end of the afternoon, but John had come home early. 

“The color red gets you…” John stopped to clear his throat. “How long?” 

The throat clearing must not have worked, because his voice had a husky quality to it that appealed directly to Sherlock’s cock for assistance. It worked, too, as Sherlock’s cock started to pull in more blood than it needed. Sherlock frowned down at it, hidden by his red trousers, and wondered when it had taken an interest in anything. 

“It’s not the color, John.” The ‘don’t be an idiot’ was heavily implied. “It’s what the color represents. Even I know that much about psychology.” 

“What does it represent? I mean, I thought you didn’t, you know, at all.” 

“If I must spell it out for you, the color red has awakened my libido, dispelling the entrenched notion that I am asexual. I always thought I was, little to no interest in sex, though I was capable of performing the act if I had an alternate reason for it. Apparently, that was as much a misdiagnosis as the high functioning sociopath, so I should leave diagnosis to medical professionals. Being capable of sex when I put my mind to it clearly shows that I am demisexual, needing to be intellectually stimulated as well as physically, though I doubt I could have avoided you even if I’d know that beforehand. There’s nothing about you that says you’d become integral to my life and even if it was tattooed on your forehead that you were unique and addictive, I still would have been your flatmate if only to prove your forehead wrong. And yes, if my dick can start to take an interest in life just because I can’t stop thinking about you in red pants then I can anthropomorphize your forehead as well. I’ve loved you for longer than I can remember, which is so frustrating because I remember everything about you, I’ve thought of building a second mind palace just to hold information on you, but now I want to have sex as well as everything else we do. How did you do this to me, you and your red pants?” 

Sherlock wrenched his hands out of the cuffs in frustration, his rush of words deserting him. Emotions were so useless and confusing, how could he live like this? 

“These red pants?” John asked. 

Sherlock looked up, finding a mostly naked John in front of him. His hard cock was clearly outlined by the red pants, and Sherlock’s cock tried to do the same in his leather trousers. Words and higher brain functions deserted Sherlock this time. 

“I’ve been wanking myself sore this last week, thinking about you on a bed of red silk, only to come home and find you bought red sheets. Having to hide erections under my coat like a teenager! This is what you do to me, what you’ve done since you winked at me. What was that about? I’ve never seen you wink at anybody else, um, never mind.” John knelt, brushing a chaste kiss across Sherlock’s lips. “I thought you knew I was in love with you and dating in hopes of finding a way to reduce the hold you have on me.” 

Sherlock blinked, the movement pulling a tiny bit of blood into his head. “Not gay.” 

“Gay, bi, a, demi, who gives a fuck?” John shrugged, a brilliant smile reaching his eyes. “We love each other; let’s see what we enjoy doing to each other.” 

Sherlock grabbed John’s shoulders and moved in for the first kiss he’d ever initiated without a goal in mind. Sloppy and messy, it was everything he expected of a kiss, but it was good, it was great, because it was John. John parting his lips and exploring Sherlock with his tongue. John running his hands down Sherlock’s torso, John’s thumbs playing with Sherlock’s nipples. Stuff he’d allowed before suddenly felt good and right, because John was doing it. John pulling his mouth away to pant into Sherlock’s shoulder. 

“Sherlock,” John started but had to take a few more breathes before continuing. “I’m going to cum the instant you touch me. Let me touch you until I do that, and then I’ll spend hours exploring you and making you feel good.” 

“I’m going to cum from unzipping my trousers.” 

John giggled into his shoulder. “Fine, we wank together, get that orgasm out of the way.” 

“And spend the rest of the day making love?” Sherlock asked, surprised at his own phrasing. 

“Rest of our lives, love.” John brushed his hand lightly against Sherlock’s cock as he spoke. 

Sherlock’s red world went white in a blinding orgasm. When he could see again, he saw a delighted John was unwrapping Sherlock like a present where they lay on the floor together. Great care was used to slowly undo each button and to kiss the bit of skin newly revealed to him. Sherlock watched, mesmerized by being the one observed so closely. John moved easily from the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt to the one on his trousers. It was only undoing the zip that made John stop, staring at Sherlock with several emotions on his face. 

“No red pants?” 

“Couldn’t even put them into the drawer without masturbating.” 

John’s face settled into an emotion, a new one for Sherlock to catalog: desire. “I’d like to see that.” 

“Doctor John, I believe I shall need deconditioning therapy daily for quite some time.” 

“Please, call me Doctor Pavlov.” There was a wicked, playful grin with these words, but before Sherlock could work out just what John meant, John was kissing Sherlock’s cock and Sherlock purposely abandoned his higher thinking functions, at least for a little while. 


End file.
